Drilling reviews draw Senate fire

Senate drilling backers are pushing back against language Democrats have tucked in a massive draft spending plan for next year that would triple the amount of time allotted to federal regulators to grant or deny an offshore drilling plan.

Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) Tuesday sent a letter to leaders on the subcommittee overseeing Interior Department spending to “strenuously object” to the language expanding from 30 to 90 days how long the Bureau of Ocean Energy, Management, Regulation and Enforcement has to review a drilling plan.

Story Continued Below

The fight essentially is a continuation of one that has been going on for months between drilling supporters in parties and administration officials over the sluggish pace of permits that are being processed since the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig and subsequent unprecedented Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

The administration placed a six-month ban on deepwater drilling permits in the wake of the Gulf spill in order to start developing new offshore oversight and safety regulations that Interior continues to roll out. Drilling backers say that a de facto permitting ban remains on both deepwater and shallow water drilling permits.

“After the Deepwater Horizon accident, it is clear that changes must occur to help strengthen our nation’s offshore oil and gas regulations,” Landrieu and Murkowski wrote. But it is unnecessary to extend the BOEMRE review to 90 days, they argue. “We cannot in good conscience legitimize this inexcusable delay by codifying it in an appropriations bill while offshore workers and their families continue to suffer.”

The drilling plans Interior has to review include environmental analyses, oil spill response strategies and other aspects of a larger blueprint that need to be approved before a company requests an actual permit to drill.

President Obama requested the extension to 90 days to approve the offshore plans as part of a series of Interior budget amendment recommendations in September. The 30-day limit has been in law for decades but has undergone great scrutiny since the BP disaster, with federal, environmental and other officials saying a longer review time may have helped prevent the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig that killed 11 workers.

Drilling proponents closing following the issue claim Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who chairs the Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, added the language after being asked to do so Interior officials. A Feinstein aide said the language came from the White House and went through Feinstein's subcommittee.

Neither Feinstein nor a spokesman could confirm that Tuesday. An Interior spokeswoman referred to Obama's request for the 90-day timeframe and did not know how the spending bill language originated.